


Who's Gonna Drive You Home?

by twobirdsonesong



Category: CrissColfer - Fandom, Glee RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Chris is a famous movie star, Drabble, Fluff and Humor, M/M, That's it, and Darren drives an Uber
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 16:17:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2779619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twobirdsonesong/pseuds/twobirdsonesong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris is a famous movie star and Darren drives an Uber.  That's it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who's Gonna Drive You Home?

The only reason Chris takes an Uber that day is because it’s pouring down rain and his meeting ended early and he doesn’t want to wait to call his car or a cab to come pick him up.  Sometimes he really hates not driving himself around.

 

The app tells him his driver is named Darren and that he drives a black Prius. Chris huddles under the awning of the office building, checking his emails while rain splashes on his shoes. 45 minutes and he’s already got a dozen new messages from his agents, his manager, and whoever the hell else needs him at any given moment.

 

A car pulls up two minutes later, the Uber sign glowing in the window, and Chris throws himself into the back seat.

 

“Cats and dogs, right?” The guy in the driver’s seat asks and Chris looks up from his phone in confusion.  
  
“What?”

 

The guy – Darren – turns around and Chris feels like someone just punched him in the gut. He’s got a mess of dark hair sticking out from under a beanie and a strong nose and eyes some riot of color.

 

“The rain. It’s really coming down.” Darren’s face is open and guileless and Chris blinks to stop staring.

 

Chris shakes himself.  “Oh, yeah.”

 

“Where are you headed?”

 

“Oh, uh. 9000 Sunset.”  He’s got a meeting with his publicist that he’s going to be early for since this one ran short. It’ll be fun to sit awkwardly in an empty conference room while intern walk by pretending to be busy.

 

Darren chatters away the whole drive there, but Chris tunes him out, focused on his million emails.  At some point he needs to get a personal assistant to deal with some of this bullshit.

 

***

 

The next time Chris has to grab an Uber is because he’s stumbling drunk and he doesn’t want anyone to see him like this, not even his hired driver who has signed an enormous stack of paper to never speak a word to anyone. Chris’ next movie is coming out in a month and the last thing he needs are paparazzi blasting photos of him sweating and bleary-eyed all over the media.  Staying out late in West Hollywood is one thing, puking in a dark alley and having people know about it is something else all together.

  
Chris slips out of the back of the club as he thumbs at his phone, trying to get the app up through the haze of vodka and lime.  The closest car is three minutes away and Chris doesn’t even care that it’s not an Uber Black.  He’s not quite _that_ full of himself at this point.

 

A car rolls up across the street and Chris squints at it, trying to figure out if it’s for him. The driver’s side window rolls down and a curly head pops out.

 

“Someone tap for an Uber?”

 

Chris waves his phone and ambles over there.

 

“Oh hey man!” The driver exclaims as Chris struggles to get his seatbelt on. “What a coincidence. I’ve never had a two-timer before.”

 

“Uh, hey.”

 

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

 

Chris shakes his head, fingers thick and clumsy on the buckle.  “Uh.”

 

The driver chuckles.  “Must have been a good night.”

 

Chris slumps in his seat.  “Sort of.” He’d gone to a premiere for some movie he wasn’t in earlier that evening and the after party had moved to the club deep in West Hollywood.  It’s easy to go too far with bottle service, especially when cameras are always around.

 

“Well, where am I taking you this time?”

 

“Home.” He gives the driver his address and leans his forehead against the cool glass of the window.

 

***

 

Two weeks later Darren is already laughing when he picks Chris up from the back alley of an award show he’s sneaking out of early and he can barely get a hold of himself enough to ask Chris where they’re going.

 

***

 

Chris shouldn’t be surprised when his next Uber is a driven by someone who isn’t Darren, but he is.

  
He reluctantly gets into the car – a silver BMW of all things – and doesn’t say a word the entire trip.

 

***

 

“Ok, seriously, you _must_ be stalking me.”

 

Chris looks up from his phone to see a shiny black Prius pulled up to the curb in front of him and a young man grinning at him from the driver’s seat.

 

Recognition jolts him.  _Darren_ , his brain supplies.

 

“Uh,” his mouth says.

 

“I wonder what the record is?” Darren asks and his grin his so wide his eyes almost disappears with it.  Chris’ stomach feels tight and he ducks his head to look away from those bright eyes.

 

Chris gets into the backseat of the car, as he has before, but suddenly feels weird about it.  This guy – Darren – has driven him around Los Angeles three times before.  And even though that’s his job, and even though Chris feels like he spends half his life in the backseat of a hired car going from event to meeting to premiere and back again, it suddenly feels weird.

 

“So where are we off to today?” Darren asks brightly.

 

“Oh, uh, 5555 Melrose. It’s the--”

 

“The Paramount lot,” Darren interrupts, pulling smoothly into traffic. “I know it.”

  
Chris is going from a lunch meeting with a director to a signing meeting at the studio and the only reason he isn’t driving himself that day is because his car is in the shop after getting scraped in a parking lot (the valet had nearly shit himself) and he isn’t the kind of guy to have more than one car.

 

“Busy day?” Darren asks conversationally and Chris remembers how Darren had talked the entire first drive.  He just hadn’t been listening then.

 

“Yeah, busy life.”  Not that he’s going to complain about it.  A life filled with red carpet premieres and award nominations isn’t exactly something to be bitter about.  Even if there are days he hates it.

 

“So, why do you do this?”  Chris asks, looking up to watch the palm trees pass overhead through the moon roof.

 

“What?”

 

“Drive an Uber.”

 

Darren shrugs.  “Playing in bars doesn’t make a lot of money and sessions in a studio are expensive.”

 

“You’re a musician?”  Chris can’t deny that piques his interest, even though he’s surrounded by people trying to get famous every damn day.  He’d assumed Darren was a student or maybe someone’s assistant.  This is better.

 

“Trying to be.”

 

Chris bites his lip.  “I have friends in the music business, if you, uh, if you’re interested.”

 

Darren laughs, but not unkindly.  “Thanks, man, but I’m not gonna be that guy.  I know those guys.  I hate those guys.  And I’m doing all right.  Working on an EP and everything.”

  
“That’s cool.”

 

“Yeah, it is,” Darren nods.  “Now tell _me_ something.  Why do you take an Uber instead of one those fancy Escalades?”

 

Chris startles. “Oh, so you…uh, know…” He hates that moment when people suddenly recognize who he is and how it gets so weird and he doesn’t want Darren to get weird about it. Even though Darren is just his Uber driver.

 

“That you’re a movie star?  Yeah. I figured that out the first time I picked you up.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“Oh,” Darren parrots, turning just enough that Chris can see the curve of his cheek as he grins. “You seem cool though. I’ve driven a lot of assholes around.  I much prefer to see your name pop up.”

 

“Do you get to choose who you pick up?”  It makes Chris oddly jealous to think that maybe Darren has been picking him specifically, of all the thousands of people trying to get a ride.

 

It’s not like Chris can date normally, not any more.  But getting butterflies in his stomach over a scruffy, bright-eyed Uber driver he’s seen a handful of times in his life is another thing all together. It’s some kind of ridiculous is what it is.

 

“Nah, I’ve just gotten lucky.”

 

Chris blushes when Darren catches his eye in the rearview mirror.

 

“Do you want me to like, wait for you or something?” Darren asks when they pull up the Melrose gate of the Paramount lot.

 

Chris pauses with his hand on the door handle “Can you do that?”

  
“Sure,” Darren chirps.  “I mean, it’s not like I’m on a schedule or anything.  I can kind of do whatever I want.”

 

“You don’t have to wait,” Chris protests.  “You’re not, you know, my hired driver.”

 

Darren shrugs.  “I don’t mind.”

 

“I’m gonna be 45 minutes or so.”

 

“It’s cool. I can park down that side street. I’ve got my iPad.”

 

Chris still hesitates.  It’s such an odd thing – to have this guy waiting in his car for Chris to get out of his meeting. He’s not his personal driver; he’s just a guy.  A cute guy with nice hands and a great smile.  But just a guy.

 

“Wow, sorry,” Darren mumbles suddenly, shaking his head.  “That was probably super weird of me. Don’t worry about it.”

 

“No no!” Chris exclaims, too fast and too loudly.  “It’s fine.  I uh, I’d appreciate that.  If you’d wait.”

 

Darren brightens.  “Sweet. I’ll just be down there.”

  
Chris nods and finally gets out of the car.  He spends half the meeting thinking about Darren sitting in his car, doing whatever he can to pass the time while he waits for someone he doesn’t even know.  Part of him worries that Darren was just fucking with him and won’t actually be there. It’d be the more normal thing to do in this situation, truth be told, but still, Chris hopes.

 

He fairly runs out of the lot when he’s finally done and sure enough Darren’s black Prius is parked across Melrose.  He can see Darren through the windshield, slouched in his seat and staring down at something.

 

Chris waits impatiently at the light because he’s not stupid enough to dart across this street.  When he gets to the car, he taps on the window and Darren shoots up, almost dropping his iPad in his haste.

 

“Hey,” Chris says as he slides into the car, taking the front seat this time. He can’t get into the back, not now.

 

“Hey! How was the thing?” Darren asks and he sounds like he really wants to know the answer.

 

“It was good.  Just signed on to a new movie.”

 

Darren eyes go wide. “No shit?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“That’s so weird.”

 

Chris frowns.  “Why?”

 

Darren shrugs.  “I dunno. I guess I thought it’d be more…exciting.  More fanfare or something.”

 

Chris had already gone through the auditions and the meetings and the schmoozing lunches to get this role.  He kind of likes how anticlimactic the end can be.  Just a pen in his hand and his signature on a contract. Simple.

 

“This part isn’t.  The actual filming will be.”  It’ll be good for him to get back on a set.

 

Darren hmms like he’s considering something about Chris.  “So, where am I taking you next, good sir?”

 

“Just home.”

 

Darren seems to know all the back roads in and out of Hollywood and even though Chris has been living in Los Angeles for almost 8 years, and in his current house for nearly 2, Darren takes a route there that Chris has never even thought of.

 

“I didn’t even know that was a street,” Chris remarks as Darren takes them up a narrow winding street that feels more like someone’s alley.

 

“I know, right?” Darren responds, like that answer anything.

 

Chris house has a gate out front and Darren pulls up to it.

 

“Well, congratulations on the movie,” Darren says.  “I’m sure it’s gonna be great.  I’ll even buy a ticket to see it instead of downloading it.”

 

Chris laughs, he can’t help it.  “Gee, thanks.”

 

He should get out of the car, but he doesn’t.  He sits there, hands awkward on his thighs. Chris knows his probability streak is likely running dry, that the next Uber he gets won’t be driven by Darren, nor the one after that.  He probably won’t ever get him again.  And that makes his stomach clench unhappily.

 

“Look--” he begins.

 

As Darren says, “I’m just gonna ask--”

 

Chris laughs as Darren rubs the back of his neck.  “Look, this is probably weird, but uh, can I give you my phone number?” Chris feels like his heart is trying to escape his chest.

 

“In case you need a ride and I’m not working?”  Darren eyes are a new whiskey gold.

 

“In case you want to do something other than drive around.”

 

Darren grins.  “I’d like that.”

 

***

 

Half a day later Chris gets a text from a newly familiar number.

 

_Your Uber is here._


End file.
